Please can someone advise me with regard to our British Driving Licences? We have been in Spain for almost 6 months......time has flown by......and I am reading conflicting advice with regard to changing our driving licences.

We both have the old paper type and realise we need to change to a Spanish Licence but we are not sure if we have 6 months or 1 year to change. As yet we do not have our Residency (application was submitted when we applied for our NIE). Hubby pays into the Social System for me and kids and we plan to live here permanently. I was also wondering what would happen with our Spanish Licences if we went back to the UK?

Thanks

Sparkle

The easiest thing for you to do is to change your paper licences to card type ones in the UK. These are then valid for any EU country and Spain agreed a new law (62/2006) which means that if you hold a new card type licence there is no need for it to be changed for one issuesd from here (Spain) irrespective of the amount of time you have lived here or are planning to live here. You can of course do so voluntarily, but are under no obligation.
Originally, you were only entitled to have a UK licence for one year before it needed to be changed.

But then we come back to the old problem of having an invalid address on the licence. DVLA will not put a foreign address on the licence and if it is lost or stolen you will not be able to obtain a replacement.

Furthermore, the licence will, in common with Spanish issued driving licences, only be valid until you reach the age of 50 when it will have to be replaced with a Spanish one anyway.

There are moves afoot to introduce a European licensing agency which should solve these problems.

So everyone over 50 driving on a euro licence in Spain is illegal then ? I dont think so.
British paper licences are not liked by the Gardia as there is no photo ID, but the euro licence with its photo ID should be legal all over europe regardless of the address as long as its in europe.

beach - watch ya back looks like the boy knows his shit

one question tho - the guardia stopped me and told me i had to get my licence "certified" by the guardia in malaga - prrof of address and get the paper part stamped with my spanish address. i argued the fact that i lived in the uk for more than 181 days a year and didn´t have to - they tried to push me into paying a fine for having improper documents until i started talking about lawyers..

was i right in doing this ?

beach - watch ya back looks like the boy knows his shit

one question tho - the guardia stopped me (standard road block shite for papers ) and told me i had to get my licence "certified" by the guardia in malaga - they told me i had to take a proof of address and get the paper part stamped with my spanish address. i argued the fact that i lived in the uk for more than 181 days a year and didn´t have to - they tried to push me into paying a fine for having improper documents until i started talking about lawyers..

was i right in doing this ?

They used to make you certify your euro licence at one time, but then they remembered that Spain was actually in europe

Don't you? Well, perhaps you should read this:

http://www.juridicas.com/base_datos/...rd62-2006.html

Where is the bit that states you have to change to a Spanish licence at age 50 ?

Maybe the Spanish licence is on the way out

Article 22 and its link to Article 16.

Read my link above

That is only if you hold a Spanish licence.
All individual country licence`s in europe are changing to a european licence.

I am reluctant to quote myself in order to prove a point but isn't that what I said several posts ago?
Anyway, until then Article 22 applies to all EU driving licences not just Spanish ones. That is the point of that particular article is it not?

El titular de un permiso de conducción expedido en uno de los Estados miembros de la Unión Europea que haya adquirido su residencia normal en España quedará sometido a las disposiciones españolas relativas a su periodo de vigencia y de control de sus aptitudes psicofísicas, que serán los mismos que se establecen en el artículo 16 para los permisos expedidos en España.

Seems quite unambiguous to me.

so i take it that i wa sright then, cheers, i thought i was - it must of been the guardia not up to speed on their own rules etc.

as for the fisrt poster - i´d recomend writing to the DVLA with a change of address (your parents / brother / sister etc, tell tham that you´ve moved - to whatever address you´ll have all you other documents sent to if you still have an english bank etc, and get a new eu style card licence with accompanying paper part (you actually are legally requiered to carry both parts ) its the card thats important.

as an aside it can also be used as proof of who you are if you pay by card.

I'm not so sure, lad. Anyway, I would rather not take the risk of having to spend the morning at Trafico or pay a lawyer just to prove I am in the right.

Anyway, I see that jdr has gone offline without responding to my last post so I will leave you to it!